A Cold-War Spy Story (Wall Street Journal, 5 July 2010) now available
. . . . Paul Browne thinks he has a pretty good idea. Long before he had ascended to his position as a deputy New York City police commissioner, Mr. Browne had firsthand experience being recruited by a Russian agent—a Soviet spy betting a relationship with a small-town newspaper reporter would one day bear fruit. . . . .
Gothamist, 6 July 2010: . . . . we’re not sure if they noticed this Wall Street Journal article about NYPD Deputy Commissioner and spokesman Paul Browne—he says a Russian spy tried to recruit him in the 1970s! In 1973, Browne was taking a journalism course taught at the United Nations (he was getting his master’s at Columbia during his leave from the Watertown Daily Times) when “he met and became friendly with Alex Yakovlev, a 32-year-old who broadcast U.N. news to Eastern Europe.” From the WSJ:
Mr. Yakovlev started wooing Mr. Browne over drinks and dinner. At one point, he offered Mr. Browne $30 to write a freelance article “on anything you wish.” At a subsequent dinner, Mr. Yakovlev questioned Mr. Browne about his teachers and asked if there were any foreign students in his class. He offered to pay Mr. Browne for notes he took in his class and for the names of any diplomats Mr. Browne quoted anonymously in stories he wrote for the course.
Mr. Yakovlev also asked Mr. Browne to pretend he didn’t know him if they saw each other in the U.N. building. In the future, Mr. Yakovlev said of their relationship, “when you work for a position at a big newspaper or a government position—maybe even your friends would use it against you.” That was enough for Mr. Browne. He called one of his teachers, who then called the dean, who recommended that the FBI get involved.
The FBI believed that Browne was being recruited to be an “agent of influence… They were investing in Mr. Browne in hopes they could use the association to blackmail him later if he achieved an influential position.” Like NYPD Deputy Commissioner? Or Treasury Department staffer?
To help the FBI, Browne continued to meet with Yakovlev, even giving him a freelance article about suburban New Yorkers’ reaction to Watergate, which the Russian happily accepted, paying him $30 (in tens, which Browne turned over to the FBI). But in 1975, Browne ended contact with Yakovlev (and the meetings with stale Cuban cigars!) ultimately writing about his experience in the Washington Post. Now he realizes, “In retrospect, the Russians were in it for the long haul. Had I been turned, it would have paid dividends for them years later.” . . . .
Top NYPD Cop Paul Browne Was Once Recruited By KGB (New York Daily News, 6 July 2010)
There were 1,249 recruits sworn as the NYPD police academy’s newest class, but it was another not-quite recruit for the KGB who was the talk of today’s press conference . . . . Police Commissioner Ray Kelly said he indeed knew that his Deputy Commissioner for Public Information, Paul Browne, had once been approached to spy for the Soviet Union — an very interesting aside, considering the blanket coverage of the Anya Chapman spy case. “I’m very happy that he chose the right side,” Kelly quipped.
Browne later tried to downplay the news, saying, “There were few cloaks and no daggers,” but he offered this account to reporters:
“When I was in graduate school, I met somebody who turned out to be a Soviet KGB agent and, according to the FBI, he saw me as someone who would potentially go on into government and possibly journalism and be in position later on to be of use for the Soviets. He probably didn’t realize that the Soviet Union would collapse in the interim, but there you go. The Russians were in it for the long haul. They thought I had potential as somebody they could either turn ideaologically or blackmail by photographing me taking money.”
Asked for his memories of his interactions, Browne said: “Well, the FBI provided documents, things that had looked like I was cooperating with them for a time to keep the arrangement going, and he introduced me to at least one other KGB agent and some principals in the UN who were, obviously, he was in contact with, some ranking member in the Soviets so I suppose it was useful in that way to the FBI to get a sense of how deep the penetration in the UN was, which was significant. I’m sure I wasn’t the only one approached. I was one of many, I’m sure.” . . . .
How KGB Tried to Recruit NYPD Spokesman Paul Browne (WNYC, 6 July 2010)
. . . . Browne was just a 24-year-old journalism student when he first met Alexander Yakovlev in the early 1970s. He was taking a class at the United Nations and sitting alone in the cafeteria when three men approached his table.
“As they approached, I said, ‘Hey, I’ll get up,’” Browne says. “I volunteered, ‘I’ll go to the bar, you guys can have my table,’ and Yokovlev said, ‘No, no, sit down.’ I don’t know if he said, ‘Comrade,’ but he asked me if they could join me.”
Yakovlev told Browne he was a broadcast journalist from Moscow, and Browne said he was looking for a career in journalism or government. That seemed to intrigue Yakovlev, Browne says. Within days, the two were meeting twice a week.
Yakovlev asked Browne for names of any teachers or classmates who were foreigners, suggested Browne attend Jewish Defense League meetings and talked about sending Browne to the Soviet Union for advanced graduate studies. By the third meeting, Browne says he was pretty sure this guy was no TV reporter. He told a faculty member, who got the FBI involved. And they told Browne that Yakovlev was in fact a KGB agent who appeared to be cultivating him.
“The notion of investing that much time in anybody was baffling to me at the time,” says Browne. “In retrospect, after I read more about the Soviet espionage apparatus, that wasn’t surprising.”. . . .
New York Post, 1 July 2010: Accused Russian spy Cynthia Murphy used her cover as a Columbia University MBA student to try to turn her capitalist classmates into comrades, federal officials say. Murphy, code-named “N” by her Moscow handlers, not only tried to recruit secret agents, she also had another nefarious mission — digging up dirt on fellow students who expressed interest in or were signed up for jobs at the CIA, a criminal complaint says.
The shocking charges against Murphy, 35 — who received her master’s of business administration from Columbia in May — are laid out in the federal criminal complaint unsealed after she and her husband Richard were busted earlier this week, along with eight other US residents who allegedly worked for “Moscow Central.”
According to the complaint, Russia’s SVR spy agency last year sent electronic messages that were intercepted by US law enforcement. One of these messages directed Murphy “to strengthen . . . ties w/ classmates on daily basis incl. professors who can help in job search and who will have (or already have) access to secret info,” the complaint says.
Murphy’s bosses also allegedly told her to spy on teachers and classmates with an eye toward turning them into secret agents for Russia. “Report to C[enter] on their detailed personal data and character traits w. preliminary conclusions about their potential (vulnerability) to be recruited by Service,” the spymasters wrote.
In response to those orders, the Murphys “on many occasions” gave Moscow Center the names of professors and students affiliated with Columbia, which were then checked against the spy agency’s database “to determine is a particular potential ‘target’ was or was not ‘clean,’ ” the complaint alleges.
“Thus, for example, when an SVR database check revealed that a particular contact of Cynthia Murphy’s had been suspected by a then-Soviet bloc intelligence service of belonging to ‘a foreign spy net[work],’ Murphy was told to ‘avoid deepening contact with them for sec[urity] reasons,’ ” according to the criminal complaint.
Murphy was also instructed to ” ‘dig up’ personal data of those students who apply (or are hired already) for a job at CIA,” the Russians allegedly wrote. . . . . .
STRATFOR/Scott Stewart, 27 May 2010: One of the things we like to do in our Global Security and Intelligence Report from time to time is examine the convergence of a number of separate and unrelated developments and then analyze that convergence and craft a forecast. In recent months we have seen such a convergence occur.
The most recent development is the interview with the American-born Yemeni cleric Anwar al-Awlaki that was released to jihadist Internet chat rooms May 23 by al-Malahim Media, the public relations arm of al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP). In the interview, al-Awlaki encouraged strikes against American civilians. He also has been tied to Maj. Nidal Hasan, who was charged in the November 2009 Fort Hood shooting, and Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the perpetrator of the failed Christmas Day 2009 airline bombing. And al-Awlaki reportedly helped inspire Faisal Shahzad, who was arrested in connection with the attempted Times Square attack in May.
The second link in our chain is the failed Christmas Day and Times Square bombings themselves. They are the latest in a long string of failed or foiled bombing attacks directed against the United States that date back to before the 9/11 attacks and include the thwarted 1997 suicide bomb plot against a subway in New York, the thwarted December 1999 Millennium Bomb plot and numerous post-9/11 attacks such as Richard Reid’s December 2001 shoe-bomb attempt, the August 2004 plot to bomb the New York subway system and the May 2009 plot to bomb two Jewish targets in the Bronx and shoot down a military aircraft. Indeed, jihadists have not conducted a successful bombing attack inside the United States since the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. Getting a trained bombmaker into the United States has proved to be increasingly difficult for jihadist groups, and training a novice to make bombs has also been problematic as seen in the Shahzad and Najibullah Zazi cases.
The final link we’d like to consider are the calls in the past few months for jihadists to conduct simple attacks with readily available items. This call was first made by AQAP leader Nasir al-Wahayshi in October 2009 and then echoed by al Qaeda prime spokesman Adam Gadahn in March of 2010. In the Times Square case, Shahzad did use readily available items, but he lacked the ability to effectively fashion them into a viable explosive device.
When we look at all these links together, there is a very high probability that jihadists linked to, or inspired by, AQAP and the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) — and perhaps even al Shabaab — will attempt to conduct simple attacks with firearms in the near future. . . . .
AP, 19 May 2010: Insurgents launched a brazen pre-dawn assault Wednesday against the giant U.S.-run Bagram Air Field, killing an American contractor and wounding nine service members in the second Taliban strike at NATO forces in and around the capital in as many days.
At least 10 insurgents were killed as Taliban suicide bombers attempted to breach the defenses of the base north of Kabul, while others fired rockets and grenades inside, according to a statement issued by U.S. forces. The attack started about 3 a.m. Blasts and gunfire subsided only around midday, said Master Sgt. Tom Clementson, a spokesman for U.S. forces. No insurgents managed to get into the base, and none was able to detonate his suicide vest, the statement said.
The Bagram attack came a day after a suicide bomber struck a U.S. convoy in Kabul, killing 18 people. The dead included five American troops and a Canadian, making it the deadliest attack on NATO in the Afghan capital in eight months. The back-to-back attacks show the militants intent to strike at the heart of the U.S.-led mission, apparently part of an offensive announced by the Taliban earlier this month . . . . The attacks follow a Taliban announcement earlier this month of a spring offensive — “Operation Al-Fatah” or “Victory” — which would target NATO forces, foreign diplomats, contractors and Afghan government officials. . . . .
AFP, 17 May 2010: A senior Al-Qaeda militant had been planning an attack against the football World Cup which kicks off in South Africa next month, an Iraqi security spokesman said on Monday. The 30-year-old Saudi national, who was arrested two weeks ago, had been in contact with Al-Qaeda number two Ayman al-Zawahiri as part of his planning for the attack, though no further details were made available. Abdullah Azzam Saleh Misfar al-Qahtani “participated in the planning of a terrorist act in South Africa during the World Cup,” Baghdad security spokesman Major General Qassim Atta said at a news conference in the Iraqi capital. He added that Qahtani, who was in charge of “security” for the terror network in Baghdad, was in contact “with the terrorist Ayman al-Zawahiri to organise the plan hatched by Al-Qaeda.” . . .
